Sunday, 24 August 2014

So...how did it get to be 3+ weeks into August already? I've been hearing geese and seeing red leaves - summer's almost over! And it's so dark in the morning now (and cool!) - the birds are only starting to wake up when I leave for work, instead of being up before me. The rabbits are up early, though - Julia's been chasing (but not catching) them in the mornings while I eat breakfast. The weeds in most gardens at work are starting to slow down, but now all the deadheading and cutting back starts. I got into my garden today for the first time in a month, and did the weeding and deadheading; came out with armloads of stuff to compost.

All my other late summer - early fall stuff is going on now too - that's my excuse for disappearing from the blog.

Dye plants are ready, and I've been doing a pile of my own dyeing for the fall shows (pretty, ain't it?), teaching a class in dyeing and one in spinning, and have two, maybe three more dye classes to teach next month. It's exciting that people seem to be really enjoying the natural dyeing. One of the classes, in fact, is a group where they want to dye their own yarn for a KAL of stranded socks and slippers. One of the members I know has done a bit of dyeing and is growing dye plants, and I'll be there to organize and answer questions, and make sure they get a nice variety of colours to play with.

One craft show down, next one in 2 weeks (the Roxham Woolgathering, which has been moved a week earlier this year). One agricultural fair down, one coming in 3 weeks. We exhibit a lot - and doesn't that occasion a pile of running around cutting flowers and scrubbing veg and labelling jam jars! And thinking of jam jars...one batch of beet pickles and two of jam done, probably another round of the pickles to go.

And then there's the knitting - a few commissions, including socks for my aunt's birthday out of some of my natural-dyed yarn, and trying to accumulate stock for the shows coming up. Thank goodness for long bus rides, because otherwise I would get about 10 minutes of knitting a day after supper before I start nodding off!